


After the Fire

by Stakebait



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-01
Updated: 2010-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-09 20:56:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/91537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stakebait/pseuds/Stakebait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once a Watcher, always a Watcher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zortified (james)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/james/gifts).



> Spoilers up through Bring on the Night and Apocalypse Nowish.

  
"They need me."

"We need you."

That was Angel. Wesley took a certain pride in the fact that there was no triumph in his voice. Or even in his heart, although lord knew there would have been room for it.

"No," he said gently, "I don't think you do."

"If he's gonna be like that, screw him." Gunn was already turning away. Wes fought down the impulse to call "Charles" after him.

"Charles!" Fred did it for him. "Wesley, you saved Angel. You helped get Cordy back. You..." she trailed off into silence, looking for a polite form, one presumed, of 'assisted me in murdering a portal-wielding physicist.' She tried again. "We couldn't have done it without you."

From Gunn's back came a muttered "yeah," his tone leaving ambiguous whether he thought that would have represented an improvement.

Wesley's expression softened as he looked down at Fred. "Perhaps not, though I think you would have found a way. But in any case, it's done. You are all reunited."

Except Connor, and Wesley found himself unable to summon any urge to help repair that father/son bond. After all, he excused himself, you could scarcely find anyone less of an expert on either subject.

"Not if you go," Angel pointed out. Wearily Wesley wondered whether Angel would ever take note of the fact that others chose their pronouns for a reason. Just because he didn't use them himself, half the time...

"The world is ending, Mr. Knock 'em Dead. You're gonna miss the show." That was Lorne, keeping a wary distance but not glaring any more than red eyes generally did.

"Then it will end in England as well." He pointed out wearily. "I'll be doing everything I can to stop it. It's my destiny," he added. Angel, at least, should comprehend that much.

"But you were a sucky Watcher," Cordelia put in, from the ottoman.

Wesley gave an ironic half-bow in her direction. "I'm so glad to see your recovered memories still stand you in good stead." He gave her a smile, so she'd see that the edge was directed at himself. Once, he would have trusted that she'd understand, but things were different now. "I'm well aware of my – shortcomings. But a Watcher nonetheless."

"So what, this was all just like your day job while you waited for your big break?" Cordelia attempted to translate things into terms she could relate to.

"Hardly." He met Angel's eyes, choosing not to question why it was the vampire he needed most to convince of this. "I never wanted to return to the Council."

"Is it because of..." Angel's hand gesture took in the front door, boarded up again after yet another demon had crashed through, and by extension all of Los Angeles. Only long experience enabled Wesley to make the proper translation as 'the time I tried to kill you in your hospital bed.'

Or perhaps it was 'the time I lied to you about how things stood between us so you would help return my girlfriend to this plane of existence.' He supposed it was a rather difficult charade to perform, at that.

Wesley hesitated. "In part," he said finally. "There are only a handful of us left. I would always have had to go."

He left the implication unspoken: But I would have come back.

******

Wesley'd meant to go to a hotel. Check in under an assumed name -- one provided by a Los Angeles associate on short notice, for a substantial consideration, since he had to assume his old Watcher identities were compromised. Wash away the film of recycled air that prolonged travel inevitably produced, perhaps indulge in Indian takeaway and a mindless film until his skewed schedule and racing mind would let him sleep.

Tomorrow would be soon enough, surely, to confront the reason for his return. The first order of business should be to contact the others, and face the well-bred gloating of his father, who would surely be relishing being back in the saddle despite the awful circumstances.

Wesley's feet, evidently, had other plans. They turned left when he meant to go right and fetched up against the police cordon, half-a-block sooner than he would have expected, if he'd allowed himself to have expectations.

The pile of rubble was impressive, but it didn't seem nearly tall enough to contain twelve stories of Council Headquarters. All those lovely high ceilings, he supposed. The legacy of Georgian sensibilities and Templar treasury had a long reach, even though the latest renovation had been between the Wars.

Wesley forced himself to stop considering history and assimilate his surroundings. Twisted girders stuck up out of the heap. His mind kept expecting to see file cabinets, bookshelves, the heavy globe -– dented perhaps, like a plummeting safe in a cartoon, but recognizable. Instead he saw scraps that looked liked nothing he remembered. The air smelled thick with something that wasn't quite smoke, like brick dust and sweet barbecue, and his throat convulsed as the meaning of that sank in.

There had been three hundred people in the building, officially, not only full-fledged watchers but file clerks and interns and janitors, security guards, old Winston who dispensed coffee in the shop downstairs. Not many anymore knew he'd been head of Wetworks in his day, and a damned fine assassin until the gout kicked in. When anyone asked what possessed him to go from that to this, he just said it was still wet work, then chuckled at the awful pun and said he missed having an office to go to. His wife got sick of him under her feet.

Winston got out. That was something. Almost forty had got out, and only three had died after the fact of smoke inhalation in the week since the explosion.

Two more had died of axe wounds.

There were probably somewhat more than three hundred present, unofficially. Field operatives dropped in for a book or a briefing and got waved through on sight. And some of those "storage rooms" in three levels of basement looked like dungeons to the uninitiated -– particularly to any uninitiated unfortunate enough to be chained up in the bloody things. Poor bastards, that was the least of their troubles now. Not all of them were vampires and demons kept on hand like live turtles on an old sailing ship, to keep fresh. Wesley looked again at the pitifully condensed pile of rubble and wondered how much of it was underground, like an iceberg.

Wesley made a mental note to get someone competent to act as the police liaison. It was critical to make sure all excavations were done in daylight, and not round-the-clock, however politically expedient it might be for those who put the bombing of a "private gentleman's club" in London down to terrorists. The last thing they needed was for any starving vamps, freed by the explosion, to go savaging their rescuers in the ruins. This might be the end of the world -– it was certainly the end of the Council as Wesley, or anyone living, had known it -– but they would go out as they'd always lived, with a certain regard for decorum and the necessary order of things.

Wesley's eyes were watering, from the dust of course. He'd always hated this building, with its stolid ugly lines and its stolid ugly people making pronouncements on his life from their position of invincible ignorance.

As a boy he'd hated summers pushing carts of books through hushed cool rooms -– for the proper preservation of the texts, naturally, not the comfort of their attendants -– learning discipline and silence while his schoolmates got sunburned and sweaty and bee-stung at one country place or another. Hated the pop quizzes from old friends of his father even as he made sure to respond appropriately, hated the red faces and the thick hearty hands on his shoulder, the chuckle that greeted every answer, right or wrong alike, as if his mere presence were amusing. Perhaps it was.

The Watcher Academy had been a different story. Wesley knew what he had to accomplish there, knew he excelled at it in the eyes of his instructors if not his fellow pupils. Here, it seemed, everyone had known the rules but him.

He'd stood here, feeling rumpled and ungraceful despite what he was assured was impeccable tailoring, before a panel of smiling, ahem-mumbling, pencil-twirling bastards, and been told to pull up his life and move to a city far younger than the table they sat at. It was an honor, they said. He'd stood, defiant, before the same table and the same men eight months later and been told "bring the Slayer to heel" and "let the vampire die."

The vampire. Angel. Wesley's shoulders shook in a silent laugh. Of all the jobs he'd screwed up, which was fast becoming a very long list, letting the vampire die appeared to be the one he'd failed at most spectacularly. He remembered pale, cracked lips latching onto his arm, the unexpected sting of sea-salt in the cut he'd made, the blood running out of him until that hard mouth was strong enough again to suck. Remembered thinking, this is what it must be like to nurse a child. No wonder he hates me.

There was a can of lager mixed in with the junk, and it suddenly seemed very important to remember that, vital, though he couldn't imagine why, or even tell whether it had been part of the remains or merely chucked in later by a passing sightseer, one of the camera crews perhaps. Something in Wesley's chest gave a half-twist and he was crying. He was struck by how little difference there was between that and the laughter. Even the tiny, involuntary movements were the same.

He heard the crisp echo of leather soled shoes on pavement and swallowed hard, willing himself to stillness and silence. He couldn't wipe his face, or turn it, without revealing too much, so he merely looked out over the site like a surveyor and schooled his voice to remoteness.

"Quite a display," he said, which would be equally suitable for his father or a police detective. Assassins, he assumed, were unlikely to pause to admire the view.

The shoes stopped beside his own. "I hoped you'd come."

********

Three scotches had still not sufficed to cut the cloying sweet taste of dust in the back of Wesley's throat. Perhaps he should have chosen a beverage itself less redolent of smoke. But at least they had undone the worst of the knots that gripped the back of his neck. His jacket and tie lay crumpled and discarded over the back of an old leather armchair in Rupert Giles' London pied-a-terre, and he wondered what had possessed him to unearth one of his old suits for a lengthy transatlantic journey. Some vestigial sense of reporting for duty, he supposed. Or perhaps it was only that one always dressed up for a funeral.

He glanced across at Rupert, who was studying him with a hint of a question in his eyes, then deliberately reached up to unbutton his shirt collar, exposing the scar.

He braced himself for an interrogation, but none came. Instead, Rupert pulled his own jumper over his head, exposing a remarkably fit frame for a man of his years inside a thin, white T-shirt that clung nicely to his arms.

Perhaps it was time to lay off of the Scotch.

Belatedly Wesley realized what Giles had meant to draw his attention to -- the long, thin scar, still bearing evidence of recently removed sutures, that covered the back of his neck, a virtual twin to his own.

"Axe," he explained briefly.

"Knife." Wesley returned. And something, perhaps the light in Giles' eyes that spoke of remembered pain, impelled him to add more than the bare minimum he'd offered to others. "I... lingered too long in the wrong conversation."

Rupert tilted his head back and finished the rest of his scotch in a single long swallow. "Funny. So did I."

He reached across the table and ran a finger along Wesley's scar. Wesley froze. But Rupert sat back calmly as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, and after a moment Wesley forced himself to do the same.

"I've been thinking," he said abruptly, and waited for the sarcastic jibe that would have accompanied such an announcement in Sunnydale. None came.

Wesley cleared his throat, wondering how it was that Giles still had the power to make him feel unsure of himself and wet behind the ears. He had to admit, these days, it made a pleasant change.

"Ah, yes," he continued awkwardly. "I've been thinking that since most of the Watchers we have left are field workers, reluctant to return to the main Council even in a time of crisis, we should make certain someone they respect assumes control for the duration of the emergency. I realize --" my father "-- some of our more traditional members emeritus would be only too happy to take over, but frankly I doubt they'd be able to assimilate the changed circumstances in time. And the last thing we can afford just now is a failure of communication." If nothing else, Wesley learned from his mistakes.

Giles raised an eyebrow. "Did you have someone in mind?"

"You." That was too bald. Wesley rushed back into speech. "That is, if you'd consider the position, as the watcher of the current slayer, you have...undeniable authority..." Wesley belatedly became aware of a possible second meaning to his words, and broke off, blushing.

Rupert's mildly questioning expression didn't alter. "Do I?"

Wesley caught his eyes and held them a moment longer than politeness dictated. "Indeed."

Yes, definitely past time to quit the Scotch. Wesley poured another slug for himself instead and then, without asking, brought one for Giles as well. In the back of his head he heard "I am your faithful servant, Angel..." but he shook the words away.

Giles accepted the glass and clinked it with Wesley's in a toast.

"What are we drinking to?" Wesley asked.

"To forget." Giles answered. Wesley drank deep.

He didn't protest when Giles took the glass from his fingers and set it aside.

"You'll stay here tonight?" It wasn't quite a question.

Wesley smiled. "Undeniably."

******

Wesley's hands ached from clinging to the wrought iron of the bedstead. Giles' eyes looking down at him were dark and soft -- as soft as his cock, pressing into Wesley's thigh as he straddled him, was hard.

"Do you want me to stop?" Rupert asked.

"No..." Wesley twisted under the gentle touch, sounding unsure even to himself.

Rupert seized him under the chin, forcing him to make eye contact. "Do you want me to stop?" he repeated slowly and distinctly.

"No!" Wesley's response was instinctive. "It's just..." his lids lowered, unable to meet that steady gaze. "It was easier..."

"When it hurt." Giles' tone was understanding. Wesley flinched again.

"Please..."

Giles' fingers traced the scar on Wesley's stomach so lightly that he felt the touch only as a trail of warmth. His hands moved over the bruises on Wesley's chest and thighs, the ones he'd put there himself only an hour ago -- or a minute, or a day. Wesley didn't know or care.

"Please..." the raw desperation in his own tone shocked him.

Rupert's hands never stopped gliding over his skin. "Please what, Wesley?"

"Please fuck me again." He was still sore from the first time, Giles' cock pounding into him until they both screamed.

Giles ran a finger along his jaw. "No."

Wesley moaned in frustration, squirming his hips against Rupert's weight in a futile attempt to achieve some friction. He still hadn't been permitted to come.

And then his motion was even more fruitless as Rupert stood up and pulled away altogether.

Wesley's eyes went wide. "No, please, I'll stop. I'm sorry." Determinedly he forced himself to stop babbling. Something of formal reserve returned to his tone. "I mean, it's your decision, of course."

"Yes," said Giles, "it is." And he leaned down to take the tip of Wesley's cock between his lips.

Wesley's body went rigid. "No." he said flatly. Giles' tongue encircled him with wet warmth, disregarding his protests.

Wesley's voice became almost panicked. He couldn't do this, not without Lilah and her games, not freely given by a good man with every reason to despise him. "I -- I can't. Rupert, please. I don't deserve --"

Rupert looked up at him. "You don't have a choice, Wesley."

Evidently he was right. His body pushed forward, wanting more with the same dumb obstinacy with which it had determined to live. And then his cock slid into Rupert's waiting throat, smoothly, inevitably, with just the faintest graze of teeth, and Wesley ceased to be able to think at all.

He supposed he must have come. There was bitterness in his mouth where Giles must have kissed him, afterwards, and yes, that was what he needed to take the taste of death away. But all Wesley could remember clearly was Giles' voice, saying "Let go. Let go, Wesley. It's all right. You can let go now."

"I can't," he said, but a fine tremor ran through him. He felt Giles' fingers peeling his own away from his grip on the bed frame, massaging the blood back into them.

"Oh," Wesley said, deflated and feeling foolish. "Naturally. Of course."

Giles gathered him into his arms. "I meant the other too."

He sounded tired. Wesley twisted around in the older man's lap to look up into his face. "You've done this before," he said with sudden certainty.

Giles hesitated, then nodded. "With Willow. And Buffy, long ago."

He saw Wesley's horrified expression and laughed. "Not quite like this, Wesley. No belts or blades, and very little nudity. I only meant... people come to me for punishment. I don't know why they find it so much harder to take forgiveness in its place."

Wesley spoke the first words that came to him. All his carefully constructed filters seemed to have fallen away. "You'd make a good father."

Giles' voice was bitter. "I don't suppose I'll ever know, now."

Wesley sat up and pulled Giles into his own arms instead. A nasty little voice in his head said that of course, seeing Giles weak would make him feel stronger, but he put it aside. "Did you ever forgive Angel?" he asked quietly.

There was silence for a long moment. "I couldn't," Rupert said into Wesley's shoulder.

Wesley ran his fingers soothingly through the hair at the base of Rupert's neck, and tried not to touch the angry red scar. "It's all right," he told Giles. "Neither could I."

******

When Wesley awoke, sunlight streamed through a high window onto the tangled white linens. The bed was empty, but a certain aroma of shaving lather and coffee grounds told him he was not alone in the flat.

He could neither bring himself to don a hopelessly creased suit without benefit of a shower, nor saunter nonchalantly naked into someone else's kitchen.

In the end, Wesley appropriated Giles' discarded T-shirt – fortunately on him it would be both long and loose. He buried his face in the jersey softness to savor the musky scent of the man before he pulled it over his head. Bruised muscles that had set into a semi-fetal curl protested the motion, and Wesley smiled as he stretched again. He rather liked this sort of morning after.

He walked out of the bedroom, running a hand through his tousled hair in an ineffectual attempt to smooth it. Rupert, freshly showered and dressed and looking very kempt by comparison as he stood at the counter, caught him about the waist and pulled him in for a deep kiss.

So much for awkwardness, Wesley thought, laughing as he half-tried to evade Giles' touch, but serious too. "Stop that! I must taste appalling! Not to speak of look. I only hoped I might borrow a towel and perhaps a cup of something to counteract the scotch."

Rupert cupped his cheek. "You look sleepy and rumpled. And thoroughly fucked."

Wesley blushed. Giles leaned in to whisper in his ear. "As far as I'm concerned, you should always look like that."

Wesley's breath caught. The words seemed to imply… some sort of ongoing arrangement.

But Giles had already released him and was handing him a thick china mug of coffee and a plate of eggs and toast. Wesley blinked in confusion. Giles had been… cooking for him?

"Got to keep your strength up." Giles said, and Wesley blushed again. He sat down at the table and put a forkful of eggs into his mouth – it was easier than thinking of a reply.

Wesley took a long, head-clearing draught of coffee, then met Rupert's eyes over the rim of the cup. "Surely if you're in charge… I'd have to look however you like."

To his surprise Rupert looked down and away, and Wesley had ample time to curse his own clumsy, overeager presumption before he finally spoke.

"I can't."

Wesley opened his mouth and closed it again. He was utterly at a loss for some clever phrasing that might make his offer seem a joke, or turn the subject. "I see," he said at last.

Oh what the hell, he thought, why was he still hanging on to this ridiculous pride? What had it ever gotten him but complications? "I – want to thank you anyway. For last night. It was — what I needed."

Rupert looked up, startled, and reached to cover Wesley's hand with his own. "Oh no. I meant – I can't be in charge, Wesley."

Wesley blinked and took another gulp of coffee. "Oh!" he said in a relieved tone.

"Why not?" he remembered to ask, after a moment.

"Because I'm going to Sunnydale. We've gathered what few Slayers in training survived in England. I'll instruct the other Watchers to bring or send their charges to me for protection."

Wesley nodded, his mind engaging automatically. Protection? On a Hellmouth? There was only one logical conclusion. "You're building an army."

Rupert smiled. "I knew you'd see it. We can't fight evil one on one, not any more."

"I – could come. Help. I know my track record isn't ideal, but I've had some… experience, lately, in organizing the strong willed." Not that that had been such a rousing success either.

Giles was shaking his head. "I need you here."

Wesley's laugh was bitter. "To do what, water your plants? Keep my father off your back?"

"Pick up the pieces." Rupert caught and held Wesley's eye, forestalling his objection. "How many times have you done that now? You can't tell me you don't have a knack."

Wesley felt almost dizzy, as if he'd fallen into a kaleidoscope, as the phases of his life rearranged themselves into this new and unprecedented perspective.

"I … suppose I do," he said slowly. "Or practice, at any rate. I had no choice."

Giles shook his head. "There's always a choice. Give up or go on."

Wesley set the coffee down and gave Giles an irritated look. "What kind of a choice is that?"

Giles gave him a smile in return that did something strange to his chest. "The kind you've already made."

"You're very portentous for –-" Wesley glanced at the clock, since his inner rhythms were still half on LA time –- "9:30 a.m."

Giles chuckled. "I had a shower. Look, I'll send the Watchers to you once I've got the girls safe. The last thing I need is more cooks than broth. Get the Council going again, work whatever contacts we've got. Spend all the cash and favors if you have to – if we don't pull this off, well, they say you can't take it with you."

"You can, actually," Wesley corrected, peering over his glasses in parody of a certain stuffy librarian. "According to most sources you can bring any number of things through a portal to hell. The difficulty apparently lies in retaining them thereafter."

"I'll bear it in mind." Giles said dryly.

"I suppose it makes sense but… why me?" Wesley asked. "Our… personal affinity aside, there can't be a Watcher on the Council who's unaware of my spectacular failure with not one but two Slayers, and my brief time working for a vampire scarcely improves my qualifications."

"Because you know what needs to be done."

"You told me," Wesley pointed out reasonably, "in five minutes. I daresay you could tell someone else. Although," he felt confident enough to add with a note of mock-possessiveness, "I would prefer they be dressed."

"You knew before I told you. Hell, you told me, Wesley, last night. And offered me the job as though you had the right to give it. You've learned how to make the hard decisions."

Rupert's eyes lingered on the scar, and Wesley wondered suddenly just how close an eye the Council kept on its former members, and if he hadn't asked because he already knew. "You're ready for this. Take it."

Wesley thought it over as he finished the coffee, then carefully set the cup down. "Well, all right. Honestly, what's the worst that can happen? The world will end, and no one will be left to say I told you so. However I must say I'd feel like more of a fearless leader with pants."

Giles chuckled, and leaned in to kiss him. Wesley wondered if one-night-and-the-next-morning stand was its own category. "Perhaps," he said a trifle breathlessly, "I needn't feel like a leader just yet."

Giles pulled back regretfully. "There's no time. The others arrive this morning. If all goes well, we'll be on a plane by noon."

Giles scooped something up off the counter. "You might as well stay here. No sense in wasting money on a hotel room." He looked, of all things, shy, and avoided Wesley's eyes even as he put a bunch of keys in his hand and closed Wesley's fingers around it.

Rather a lot of keys, Wesley thought, for a tiny flat in a not-particularly-fashionable part of London. "Extra precautions?" he inquired, hoping the other man would realize that he wasn't mocking. He, of all people, would understand the need for additional locks in the wake of such an experience. But Giles shook his head.

"The car. The… country place. Outside of Bath. Get some use out of them." Giles gripped his shoulder in playful warning. "No wild parties, mind."

In other words, I trust you with my most precious possessions, and I'm afraid I'm going to die. Wesley gave thanks to whatever Powers might still be taking an interest that he was British, and didn't have to handle such things on the level of actual speech.

"Break Faith out, or kill her." Wesley told Giles. In other words, I'll do the job, I promise. And I won't let sentiment stand in the way. Not even for you. Wesley felt Connor in his arms again. He was surprisingly heavy for something so small.

Wesley must have been looking at the floor, because a kiss ghosted over his forehead, and when he looked up in surprise, Rupert was walking towards the door. A small bag sat ready beside it. Apparently he traveled light these days.

"Rupert?"

He turned.

"I'll water the plants."


End file.
